The Child Dying - Poem by Edwin Muir

Unfriendly friendly universe,I pack your stars into my purse,And bid you so farewell.That I can leave you, quite go out,Go out, go out beyond all doubt,My father says, is the miracle.

You are so great, and I so small:I am nothing, you are all:Being nothing, I can take this way.Oh I need neither rise nor fall,For when I do not move at allI shall be out of all your day.

It's said some memory will remainIn the other place, grass in the rain,Light on the land, sun on the sea,A flitting grace, a phantom face,But the world is out. There is not placeWhere it and its ghost can ever be.

Father, father, I dread this airBlown from the far side of despairThe cold cold corner. What house, what hold,What hand is there? I look and seeNothing-filled eternity,And the great round world grows weak and old.

Hold my hand, oh hold it fast-I am changing! - until at lastMy hand in yours no more will change,Though yours change on. You here, I there,So hand in hand, twin-leafed despair - I did not know death was so strange.